Democrat California Governor Gavin Newsom will “undeniably, unequivocally” run for president in 2024, according to insiders speaking to TheWrap on Monday.
That is, if President Joe Biden doesn’t seek a second term.
Tina Daunt reports that, speaking anonymously, a “leading California fundraiser” told her that there are “No ifs, ands or buts. He will run if Biden does not.”
The anonymous tipper’s revelation was confirmed — anonymously — to Daunt by “a Los Angeles philanthropist with deep connections in the Democratic Party.”
You can read the whole report here, but I must ask: Why speak anonymously if Newsom will run only if Biden doesn’t?
That’s where things get tricky.
Just three weeks ago, Biden filed the papers for his reelection campaign, when he’ll be just shy of 82 years old. In November of last year, the White House said it was Biden’s “intention” to run again.
But as PJ Media’s own Chris Queen reported in July, a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll showed that “a whopping 71% of those surveyed don’t want Joe Biden to make a second run at the Oval Office.” Those numbers were echoed by a similar poll conducted just two weeks later showing that two-thirds of Democrats don’t want Biden at the top of the ticket a second time.
With numbers like those, it’s almost a sure thing that Biden will draw at least one primary challenger, should he decide to stick around.
Maybe Biden himself recognizes that fact, even through the thick fog of his brain.
In a gaffe-filled Sunday night 60 Minutes interview — that instantly induced Hiroshima-scale migraines for the White House — Biden said that it’s “much too early” to decide on ’24.
“Look, my intention, as I said to begin with, is that I would run again,” Biden told CBS’s Scott Pelley. “But it’s just an intention. But is it a firm decision that I run again? That remains to be seen.”
His 2024 paperwork says “yes” but his dark, tired eyes say “no.”
There is really no limit to Joe Biden’s overweening ambition, despite a five-decade career of little accomplishment. His greatest claim to fame is having permanently poisoned the Senate’s Supreme Court approval process. Even the man who plucked Biden from eventual obscurity, Barack Obama, warned people not to “underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.”
So my brain says, “Of course Biden will run again in ’24. It’s all that scheming mediocrity knows how to do.”
But my heart wonders if that tired old man, neck-deep in the harm he’s caused our country, might figure out some way to retire semi-gracefully on a manufactured high note.
So if you’re Gavin Newsom, why not just announce to the world, “Hell, yeah, I’m running for president”?
Because Newsom — despite being another scheming mediocrity of untethered ambition — is a party man. I do believe he’ll run in 2024 regardless of what Biden decides. (I’d guess the same thing about my own governor, Colorado’s duplicitous Gerard Polis.) But there’s no need to announce early and add yet another injury to his party in the weeks before November’s Red Wave election.
While not even the Shadow knows what lurks in the heart of Biden, take a look at this Greatest Whiffs package the RNC’s social media team assembled today:
RNC Research nailed it. Pretty brutal.
Tonight, Biden said those who think he is unfit for office should just “watch” him.
Let’s roll the tape.
— Kambree (@KamVTV) September 19, 2022
Is this man really running for president again?
He wasn’t fit last time around. He’s less fit now.
Back in 2019, when his primary race still looked iffy, Biden told insiders that it would be “virtually inconceivable” (their words) for him to seek a second term, provided he could beat Trump.
While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicate that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.
On the wild chance that the next Democratic primary ends up a Newsom vs. Polis slugfest, with Lame Duck Biden sitting on the sidelines, remember: You read it here first.
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